Thursday, April 17, 2014

KAMPAR: Bukit Gelugor MP and veteran DAP leader Karpal Singh was killed
when the car he was travelling in collided with a five-tonne lorry near
Gua Tempurung on the North South Expressway here early Thursday.

The impact of the crash at about 1am killed the prominent lawyer and his
assistant, C Michael, on the spot. Karpal's son, Ramkarpal, and the
car's driver, C Selvam, were injured.

Karpal's Indonesian domestic helper was also injured and is in critical condition.He was on his way to Penang to attend a court case later in the day.

The trillion dollar question to the U.S. and its intelligence services

Let me state from the outset that I totally agree with the press
statements by Malaysia’s Defence Minister and Acting Transport Minister,
Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein that “we have conducted ourselves
fairly, responsibly and history will judge us for that.”

And to
a mischievous and presumptuous question from a correspondent of the
Financial Times, Datuk Seri with confidence and integrity rightly said
without any fear of contradiction that, “I don’t think we could have
done anything different from what we have already done.” Well done!

The Financial Times, CNN and other foreign media ought to pose similar
questions to the US and its intelligence services and stop insinuating
that Malaysia has not been transparent and/or engaged in a cover-up.
Foreign media should stop engaging in dirty politics!

It is my
hope that following the publication of this article, Malaysian mass
media will focus on questioning the integrity of the US’s assistance to
Malaysia in the first three weeks of the SAR mission, notwithstanding
its recent offer of more assistance.

I take comfort that my
reservations about the US and its intelligence services as well as other
intelligence services closely linked to the US, especially British
secret service, have been more than vindicated by Reuters in its news
report on 28th March, 2014 entitled Geopolitical games handicap hunt for
flight MH370

The search
for flight MH370, the Malaysian Airlines jetliner that vanished over the
South China Sea on March 8, has involved more than two dozen countries
and 60 aircraft and ships but has been bedevilled by regional rivalries.

… With the United States playing a relatively muted role in the sort
of exercise that until recently it would have dominated, experts and
officials say there was no real central coordination until the search
for the plane was confined to the southern Indian Ocean, when Australia
largely took charge.

Part of the problem is that Asia has no
NATO-style regional defence structure, though several countries have
formal alliances with the United States. Commonwealth members Malaysia,
Singapore, New Zealand and Australia also have an arrangement with
Britain to discuss defence matters in times of crisis.

As mystery deepened over the fate of the Boeing 777 and its 239 passengers and crew, most of them Chinese, it became clear that highly classified military technology might hold the key.

But the investigation became deadlocked over the reluctance of others to share sensitive data, a reticence that appeared to harden as the search area widened.

“This is turning into a spy novel,” said an envoy from a Southeast Asian country, noting it was turning attention to areas and techniques few countries liked to publicly discuss.

Ultimately,
the only country with the technical resources to recover the plane – or
at least its black box recorder, which could lie in water several miles
deep – may be the United States. Its deep-sea vehicles
ultimately hauled up the wreckage of Air France 447 after its 2009 crash
into a remote region of the South Atlantic.

While Putrajaya
has been forced to reveal some of the limits and ranges of its air
defences, the reluctance of Malaysia’s neighbours to release sensitive
radar data may have obstructed the investigation for days.

At
an ambassadorial meeting in the ad hoc crisis centre at an airport
hotel on March 16, Malaysia formally appealed to countries on the jet’s
possible path for help, but in part met with polite stonewalling, two
people close to the talks said.

Some countries asked Malaysia to put its request in writing, triggering a flurry of diplomatic notes and high-level contacts.

‘It became a game of poker in which Malaysia handed out the cards at
the table but couldn’t force others to show their hand,“ a person from
another country involved in the talks said.

As in the
northern Indian Ocean, where Chinese forces operate alongside other
nations to combat Somali piracy, current and former officials say all
sides are almost certainly quietly spying on and monitoring each other
at the same time. (emphasis added)

WantChinaTimes, Taiwan reported:

The
United States has taken advantage of the search for the missing
Malaysia Airlines flight to test the capabilities of China’s satellites
and judge the threat of Chinese missiles against its aircraft carriers, reports our sister paper Want Daily.

Erich Shih, chief reporter at Chinese-language military news monthly Defense International, said the US has more and better satellites but has not taken part in the search for flight MH370,
which disappeared about an hour into its flight from Kuala Lumpur to
Beijing in the early hours of March 8 with 239 people on board. Shih claimed that the US held back because it wanted to see what information China’s satellites would provide.

The above is the reality which we have to confront. Therefore, desist
any attempt to label the above mainstream media articles as a
“conspiracy theory”. Reuters has let the Genie out of the bottle!

Malaysia’s Minister of Transport Datuk Seri Hishammuddin gave hints of
Malaysia’s difficulties (as his hands were tied by intelligence
protocols and or refusal by the relevant foreign intelligence services
and diplomatic reluctance) but our local media failed to appreciate the
nuances of his statements by not directing their questions at those
parties that have failed Malaysia as their neighbour and in their duties
under various defence treaties and arrangements.

Malaysian
media, please read at the minimum three times, the sentences in bold AND
WAKE UP TO THE REALITY that our country has been badly treated even
though our country put all its national security cards on the table so
that countries whose nationals are passengers on flight MH 370 could
come forward with sincerity to assist in resolving this unfortunate
tragedy which is not Malaysia’s making.

Malaysia is but a victim of this tragedy whose plane, MH 370 was used for a hidden agenda for which only time will reveal.

In my previous article posted to the website on the 27th March, 2014, I
exposed how Israel is exploiting the tragedy to create public opinion
for a war against Iran, a Muslim country that has close ties with
Malaysia.

At the outset of the SAR Mission, all concerned stated categorically that every
scenario, no matter how unlikely would be examined critically with no
stones left unturned – terrorist hijacking, suicide mission, technical
failures, inadequate security, criminal actions of the pilot and or
co-pilot etc.

Given the above premise, families of the
passengers and the crew of MH 370 have every right to ask the following
questions of the US and other countries that have sophisticated
technologies to track and monitor airplanes and ships in all
circumstances.

Such questions should not be shot down by those
who have a hidden agenda that such queries amount to “conspiracy
theories”. Far from being conspiracy theories, we assert that the
questions tabled below and the rationale for asking them are well
founded and must be addressed by the relevant parties, failing which an
inference ought to be drawn that they are complicit in the disappearance
of MH 370.

Lets us begin.

1) Was the plane ordered to turn back, if so who gave the order?

2) Was the plane turned back manually or by remote control?

3) If the latter, which country or countries have the technologies to execute such an operation?

4) Was MH 370 weaponised before its flight to Beijing?

5) If so, what are the likely methods for such a mission – Biological weapons, dirty bombs?

6) Was Beijing / China the target and if so why?

7) Qui Bono?

8) The time sequence of countries identifying the alleged MH 370
debris in the Indian ocean was first made by Australia followed by
France, Thailand, Japan, and Britain via Immarsat. Why did US not offer
any satellite intelligence till today?

9) Prior to the
switch of focus to the Indian ocean, was the SAR mission in the South
China seas, used as a cover for the deployment of undersea equipment to
track and monitor naval capabilities of all the nations’ navies
competing for ownership of disputed territorial waters? Reuters as
quoted above seems to have suggested such an outcome.

10)
Why was there been no focus, especially by foreign mass media, on the
intelligence and surveillance capabilities of Diego Garcia, the
strategic naval and air base of the US?

11) Why no
questions were asked whether the flight path of MH 370 (if as alleged it
crashed in the Indian Ocean), was within the geographical parameters of
the Intelligence capabilities of Diego Garcia? Why were no planes
deployed from Diego Garcia to intercept the “Unidentified” plane which
obviously would pose a threat to the Diego Gracia military base?

12) The outdated capabilities of the Hexagon satellite system
deployed by the US in the 1970s has a ground resolution of 0.6 meters;
what’s more, the present and latest technologies boast the ability to
identify objects much smaller in size. Why have such satellites not
provided any images of the alleged debris in the Indian Ocean? Were they
deliberately withheld?

13) On April 6th, 2012, the
US launched a mission dubbed “NROL-25” (consisting of a spy satellite)
from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The NROL-25 satellite
was likely rigged with “synthetic aperture radar” a system capable of
observing targets around the globe in daylight and darkness, able to
penetrate clouds and identify underground structures such as military
bunkers. Though the true capabilities of the satellites are not publicly known due to their top-secret classification, some
analysts have claimed that the technology allows the authorities to
zoom in on items as small as a human fist from hundreds of miles away.
How is it that no imagery of MH370 debris was forwarded to Malaysia, as
this capability is not classified though other technologies might well
remain classified? (Source: Slate.com)

14) Could it be that the above capabilities were not as touted?

15) However, in December, 2013, the USAtlas V rocket was launched
carrying the spy satellite NROL-39 for the National Reconnaissance
Office, an intelligence agency which is often overshadowed by the
notorious National Security Agency (NSA), only it scoops data via spy
satellites in outer space. The “NROL-39 emblem” is represented by the
Octopus a versatile, adaptive, and highly intelligent creature. Emblematically,
enemies of the United States can be reached no matter where they choose
to hide. The emblem boldly states “Nothing is beyond our reach”.
This virtually means that the tentacles of America’s World Octopus are
spreading across the globe to coil around everything within their grasp,
which is, well, everything (Source: Voice of Moscow). Yet, the US with
such capabilities remained silent. Why?

It cannot be said that
it is not within the realm of probabilities that the US may not want the
plane MH 370 to be recovered if rogue intelligence operators were
responsible for the disappearance of MH 370.

If the above
questions have been posed to the US and other intelligence agencies and
answers are not forthcoming, I take the view that the Malaysian
government ought to declare publicly that our national sovereignty and
security have been jeopardized by the disappearance of MH 370 and that
the relevant intelligence agencies have been tacitly complicit in the
disappearance of MH370.

By coming out openly to explain the
predicament faced by our country, Malaysia may prevent a hostile act
against a third country.

I therefore call upon
Malaysian mass media to be courageous and initiate such queries as only
the US and other intelligence agencies can give definitive answers to
the above 15 questions.

It is futile to demand answers
from Malaysia as we are not in any position to supply the information
as we do not have the capabilities of the global and regional military
powers.

Malaysians must unite behind the government so that our
leaders need not feel that they are alone shouldering this enormous
burden. -- http://www.globalresearch.ca/

*
Matthias Chang is a prominent Malaysian lawyer and author, who served
as political secretary and adviser to former Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir
Mohamad.